Give Me Reasons
by swordfighting-cherry
Summary: Damon, while smart, arrogant, and sexy- is oblivious. Bonnie Bennett knows that better than almost anyone, at least until she meets Enzo.
1. Chapter 1

"Tell me how it started," Bonnie asks them, curled up as she lays on one of the boarding house couches, all the heretics and crazy Salvatore drama long gone. Now it's just her and these two passionate and old vampire boys who are making her think the fireplace lighting is a magic of it's own.

Thinking over the turmoil she had been told in the rushed fill-in-the-blank stories of Elena and Caroline, she clarifies, "The good parts, I mean."

Enzo's eyelashes flicker as the same smirking smile that is a carbon copy of Damon's comes to his face. Bonnie expects the more openly emotional man to speak first, but it's Damon who volunteers the information. "We kept each other sane."

 _Damon told Enzo to kill him if he needed, Bonnie_ , Elena had recapped once after their unsucessful camping trip (which had been more traveler drama than anything else). While Elena had been using it as an example of why Damon was still boyfriend material, Bonnie had always remembered being confused at how out of place the offer was when Enzo had more or less tried to drown Damon's " _Elena_ ".

Of all things when he was angry and protective, selfless was not one of them.

"Oh, clearly," she laughs, and both of them look up at her and grin a little. It's the sort of ill-timed humor the three of them share, sprung up from a haunted past that makes laughter a defense mechanism. "I mean the two of you didn't do half bad considering it was a 'blind leading the blind' type situation'."

"All things considered," Enzo began darkly, with his feet rested on top of the coffee table in the exact way that Damon hated. "I suppose we bonded over the love of doomed romance."

 _Katherine_. To Bonnie, there had only been a few months of their time together when Damon didn't know that Katherine had betrayed him. Remembering that there were over a hundred of years that he didn't was one of the few reasons she could even be in the room with him after Grams had died.

 _Maggie_ – well, all she knew about Maggie was that Damon had killed her and made it look like Stefan's fault without knowing what the consequences would be years later.

Damon glanced over to Bonnie while he swirled his bourbon around for a moment, his eyes intent as he comments, "It always boils down to the love of a woman."

Even if she pulled the blanket over her head, and Enzo hadn't turned to look over at her with a smug expression, they still would have been able to feel her blushing. Their bloodlust could be inconvienient in the most innocent ways sometimes. So instead of changing the subject or stammering, she arrogantly challenges, "Oh, sorry, I wasn't aware that when two guys fall madly in love for each other it's because their girlfriends weren't there."

Unable to help feeling a little superior watching Damon immediately glare at her in the same way he always does when she doesn't fall for his pretentious flirting tactics, Enzo interrupts the impending bickering. "No one ever said we were in love with each other."

Bonnie laughs, wondering if they really didn't see it. Surely at least Enzo did, right? "Sorry, but the two of you are honestly the _least_ subtle people I have ever met and I grew up with Caroline. Explain to me how you two are just friends without using 'we haven't had sex' as a reason."

"No one ever said that either," Enzo added, much to Damon's discomposure. Looking over at the angry Salvatore didn't make him regret his confession; instead only making him defend himself. "What? You two were locked up without the confinement of a cell for almost three months in that prison world and I'm supposed to believe you really never–?"

" _Yes_!" Bonnie and Damon both exclaimed at the same time, because he had been dating Elena and Elena was her best friend. Though she will never admit it, she sees the irony now.

"Ah," he says, his lips curling as he brings his glass to his lips. "My mistake."

Curiosity, attraction, and both the need to change the subject and pursue anything that makes Damon Salvatore embarrassed, force her to ask, "So, sex, huh?"

"It was not– I mean–," he's stuttering, looking over only to glare at Enzo who looks more highly amused than she thinks she's ever seen him. Earlier the Brit had kept up his habit of sitting so casually in chairs that he might fall out. Bonnie figured it was a way to put as much space and non chalanace between him and whoever else was in the room that he could pretend he wasn't intimately vulnerable. Now he had removed his shoes from the furniture and was sitting forward, drawn to each word the other vampire spits out that keeps fumbling over the next.

Damon lamely finishs with a bitter and vague explanation of, "We were in different cells."

"True," Enzo chuckles, apparently more amused by toying with the information than dumping it out to show Bonnie details all at once. Damon doesn't seem to like this, but Enzo's staring at her in the way only he can. Damon is passionate, observant, and all the things Enzo is– but there's a stillness to Enzo when he's happy that there isn't with Damon. None more evident than the way he's looking at her right now. "What's your excuse?"

"For not having sex with Damon?" she asks incredulously. "Do you want the entire list?"

"Hey!" Damon objects immediately, in the sort of tone that implies he doesn't want her to have a list at all rather than it just being long. He doesn't quite realize it until over a second after the word left his lips, and by then his eyebrows have scrunched together like they always do when he's halfway through some rant only to have how he truly feels come out. One would think he'd stop bottling his emotions up to save himself some time.

Enzo might as well have been offered dinner in the form of a hot Whitmore freshman, because he looks oddly delighted as he says, "Yes, actually. I'll give you one reason why he and I aren't in love for every reason you give that you don't want to have sex with him, excluding lovely Elena."

Bonnie is too warm for her blanket now, and definitely not tired enough to sleep through this conversation.

"I'm going to get another _bottle_ of alcohol for this," Damon huffed, standing and going over to his bar behind the couch.

* * *

A/N: So I want to continue this, but I'm not sure who will read? If no one really wants to then I should be spending time on nano or other projects, but if you all like it I will have an excuse, lol. So please review? I know this might be a bizarre turn of events if you only read my work on here and don't follow my tumblr, lol, but please.


	2. Chapter 2

The girl is watching him with an enchanting, knowing smile as Enzo lets the pause in conversation drag simply so that Damon has no distraction other than the building tension. Well, that and the alcohol he is fiddling with as if it's the most interesting in the world. There's a million reasons that Enzo could give to incite a response out of Damon, if nothing else. Answers that might serve his purpose in endearing Bonnie to either one of them, or at the very least force the other two to realize how oblivious they were to their feelings. Hitting with a heavy start, he says, "First off, Damon has a habit of fixating on one captivating, beautiful, independent woman until nothing else in the world matters into him."

While Damon is busy rolling his eyes, Bonnie is indignant. "If I can't use her as an excuse, you can't!"

"Afraid you misunderstood. I wasn't referring to the doppelgangers," Enzo responded, feeling rather wicked in the most amusing ways. Indignance has left her expression for feigned disgust but the sincerity doesn't match her eyes which had widened for a brief second, or her mouth that had opened minutely.

"No, no, no, no, no," Damon interjects, which doesn't surprise him in the slightest. Entertained, Enzo takes a sip of his whiskey as he watches the man get up from his seat like it's not bloody obvious how his protests are too emphatic. "I am not sitting through this. I have better places to be."

"Like prancing half naked in front of Alaric?" Bonnie challenges with a deadpan tone that gives away the experience uncovered in the joke.

Damon doesn't seem to think it's funny in this context, and Enzo can't say he disagrees. Now that their environment and life has calmed down, he doesn't quite feel like he has to claw his way into this circle only to get a glimpse of what it feels like to belong. After long enough, he seems to have earned his keep. Yet each friendship that Damon holds onto tightly feels like a risk to Enzo, who has known Damon for only a year more total. A little more bitter than he wants, he drawls, "Do you simply flirt with anything breathing the same oxygen as you?"

"No," Damon retorts, the same time Bonnie answers, "Yes."

Frowning at the witch, Salvatore makes a face at both of them before glibly replying, "I just exude too much charm."

Bonnie scoffs, which Enzo has found is the most common reaction Damon seems to draw from women who aren't insecure, but he recognizes Damon's tactic. He's used it himself more than a million times, although he's generally more of a gentleman than Damon seems to be. Frustration, even mild, raises the blood pressure ever so slightly. Makes a vampire like them feel more alive as their sensory stays in overdrive. With normal prey, it's a simple high. With the people they were attracted to, it's a magnetic pull.

"Well he used that 'charm' to compel Caroline to sleep with him while he used her as a blood bag the moment he strolled into Mystic Falls," Bonnie replied.

Squinting and staring at his glass uncomfortably, Damon mutters, "That reason I deserve."

"What is it with you Salvatore brothers and your incessant need to always have touched the same girl?" Enzo questions, incredulity forcing its way into his tone. While he admires Damon for many things, his treatment of women generally leaves him with disgust. Wasn't it only the doppelgangers that were supposed to draw out this behavior? As this isn't the first time he's been surprised about some Mystic Falls history fact, he asks Bonnie, "Have you and Stefan had some secret dalliance as well?"

She gives a clear laugh as she shakes her head, nose scrunched up ever so slightly. That's what says it all, really. Questioned wrongfully about her sexual attraction doesn't fluff any of her feathers. Yet asking about her impending affair with Damon, and all of the sudden all of her guards and spells are up. "No. Your turn."

"He runs from anything meaningful," Enzo supplies, still reeling from the last revelation and intent on making the idiot vampire some level of self aware by the end of the night if it's the last damn thing he will ever do. The blue eyed glare he is receiving shows some success. "If there's a chance there won't be some maddening complication or angst where he can't have an excuse to lash out, he doesn't want anything to do with it."

There's a moment of interim silence in which he lets himself remember the farmer's house where he had told Damon those words before. Even though Enzo should have been petrified over whether one farmer turned vampire would only whet a poisoned Damon's appetite, he was only too turned on by how fucking good Damon could make veins, blood, and fangs look.

Now Damon is angrily planning how to deflect that, at least until he looks over at Bonnie who had raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. Perhaps she hadn't planned on being quite so blunt, which was rather amusing really. From what Enzo could tell Damon must have gotten under her skin somewhat for her to hold back.

"I mean, you did try to sleep with his mom," she says after a glance tells her that Damon lost his bitter reply when she had chosen not to immediately defend him.

Was everyone in Mystic Falls this enabling?

"Thank you, Bonnie," Damon responds gratefully, sounding a little unsure at the end. Vulnerability was something Enzo had heard in his voice only a handful of times in Mystic Falls. Far cry from when they were locked up in cells and everything they had said was laced with exposure. "Glad I'm not the only one who thinks that's a little _weird_."

There's a slight strangle in his voice as he forms the final word that Bonnie raises her eyebrows at. Enzo had already lined up a response about how it was Damon's mother's fault for siring him in the first place, so he's in no position to deal with how it almost sounded like Damon wasn't so much disgusted as jealous.

"You know what I mean," Damon snaps.

Unprompted, Bonnie changes sides. "I also know what he means. You and Stefan could have gotten along years ago since I knew you, and a century before that."

Enzo is sure his own smile is showing and that the moment Damon sees it he will be even more annoyed. It's not simply over Damon, however, and more about how the little witch is becoming further and further the most endearing thing about this Virginia hell hole. As much as the girl claimed to loathe Damon before the prison trip, now she would willingly dispatch clever observations on his character instead of "not caring enough" to pay attention. Trying not to chuckle too much as he remembers his own attempts to soothe the Salvatore bond back in Augustine hell, he adds, "I've said the same."

"He was a ripper!" Damon exclaimed.

"Which you've never been?" Bonnie questions unfailingly.

All of Enzo's satisfaction leaves in an instant when for one brief, pained second Damon glances at him. He can still hear the excruciating words only told as his insides were being pulled around, echoed now in an impersonal way that threatens to gut him yet again. Words that had turned so deep in his unconscious that he had heard them the moment he had let everything go himself. "Without humanity on, yes. For decades. Ripper, not quite."

Too many words have passed between them now, but in the midst of every attempt Enzo gave at explaining how he felt- _If I hate you I'll have nothing left, it might do you good to miss someone for the next sixty years, you were the most important person to me_ \- every part of him remembers how exactly he had felt Damon staring at his lips with tears in his eyes as he explained that Enzo was worth shutting everything off for.

The beautiful Bennett witch was very far from stupid, but surely she must have known that Enzo had only ever said " _we_ aren't in love with each other" followed by " _he and I"_. However since Damon was repressed enough to ignore romantic attraction to someone as devastating as Bonnie, Enzo didn't hold up much hope for himself in the end.


End file.
